On Saturday Apple's newest flagship store opened it's doors in the heart of San Francisco. Roughly 7,000 people passed through the doors that day. The New York Times' Christopher Hawthorne examined the event in his latest column.

Last night the 76th Annual Academy Awards aired on television, and for the first time since Titanic, a film took home 11 Oscars (tying the record). The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took home an Oscar in every category it was nominated in, including Achievement in Special Effects. The winning team at Weta Digital credited Apple's Shake as a key element in the creation of the effects for the film.

When the iPod mini was introduced back in January, many balked at the price tag. Why would someone pay US$250 for a device that's less than one third the capacity of the US$50-more-expensive 15GB iPod? As everyone now knows, apparently 100,000+ people were willing to pay out to get their hands on this hot little device. The New York Daily News' Nancy Dillon examines the giant success of the iPod mini in her latest column.

Napster is no stranger to the online music business. Once the pillar of file sharing online, it has evolved in form as many times as it has changed ownership. Each stop along the way has unearthed more and more trouble for this once-prominent brand. BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows takes a look at "The Nine Lives of Napster" in his latest column, concluding that Napster may once again be down, but by no means is out.

Apple today introduced the second major version of Final Cut Express, a "prosumer" video editing application based on it's bigger brother, Final Cut Pro. The new version delivers RT Extreme features for real-time compositing, an updated interface, real-time color correction and more.

Macromedia today announced Director MX 2004, the new version of its multimedia authoring tool. Enhancements in the new release include the new MX 2004 interface, support for JavaScript, support for Flash MX 2004 content, and DVD-Video capabilities.

The wait is finally over. Windows users now can get their mitts on the newly released iTunes 4.1 and with it the iTunes Music Store. Hell may have frozen over, as Steve Jobs put it, but the reactions of Windows users to this Apple product might just have driven it down near absolute zero. What could do such a thing? TMO raided the dorms of the University of Nebraska - Lincoln to dig up opinions, and it seems the Windows users like it. A lot.